PETA knows how to find a villain.
When Kristi Noem, then South Dakota governor and later a member of the Trump administration, revealed in 2024 that she had shot her 14-month-old dog Cricket, PETA went straight for her throat.
Most Americans love their dogs, and we suspect that they’ll consider Gov. Noem a psychotic loony for letting this rambunctious puppy loose on chickens and then punishing her by deciding to personally blow her brains out rather than attempting to train her or find a more responsible guardian who could provide her with a proper home. Noem obviously fails to understand the vital political concepts of education, cooperation, compromise, and compassion.
The group said Americans would consider Noem a “psychotic loony.” It later sold a Halloween costume depicting Noem as a “Puppy Killer.“
Nobody had to search for PETA’s position. Subtlety had left the building.
Then came Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, Michigan’s Democrat nominee for the Senate.
El-Sayed oversaw Detroit Animal Control for about 16 months while serving as Detroit health director. He was reported to have had more than 4,000 dogs and cats euthanized during his tenure, although the number during his actual period of oversight appears to have been closer to 1,900.
Read More: PETA Once Saved Monkeys. Now It Wants You to Be Nice to Cockroaches.
Euthanasia also declined during his tenure, and he brought in new leadership and expanded transfers to rescue groups.
Facts are facts, even when they complicate a good political punch.
But PETA’s response remains fascinating.
When questioned about El-Sayed, PETA blamed the larger problem on breeders, retailers, people who buy instead of adopt, and owners who don’t spay or neuter their pets.
From our sister site, Townhall:
A report from the Daily Mail found that El-Sayed was the subject of whistleblower complaints after he ascended to the post of health director in Detroit. Under his watch nearly 4,700 cats and dogs were euthanized, and an untold number died from malnutrition and lack of medical care, all while being subject to unsanitary conditions.
The problem grew so bad that one former employee called the Department of Animal Control under El-Sayed’s reign a “dog slaughterhouse.”
“I was almost embarrassed with myself to be part of a team that played a role of the death of so many dogs in their cages,” Detroit Animal Control whistleblower Brittany Roberts told the Daily Mail regarding the neglect. “Every morning, we’d just walk around and see who was alive before we could even feed.”
When asked for comment regarding El-Sayed’s shocking actions, PETA told Townhall that the blame shouldn’t be laid at the candidate’s feet.
The group did say allegations involving animals being denied veterinary treatment or allowed to suffer should receive an independent investigation.
Then came the remarkable part: PETA told people angry about shelter euthanasia to place the blame “firmly” on practically everyone surrounding the system.
Where was that philosophical restraint when Noem was involved?
PETA could’ve discussed difficult choices, circumstances, responsibility, or context in her case. Instead, it called her crazy and turned her into a Halloween monster. With El-Sayed, suddenly there were systems to consider, social causes to ponder, and blame to spread around.
PETA hasn’t endorsed Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. Its response, nevertheless, handed a Democrat Senate nominee something politically valuable: cover.
The timing makes the gentleness even more noticeable because voters are learning plenty about Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed. He’s repeatedly dragged Second Lady Usha Vance into attacks on Vice President JD Vance, including remarks about her pregnancy, marriage, sex life, and their “brown kids.”
From American Thinker:
Now we learn something else new and repellent about him: His unnatural, unhealthy, obsession with second lady Usha Vance, who just welcomed her fourth child with Vice President J.D. Vance. Instead of congratulating the happy family, El-Sayed openly and vulgarly speculated about her marriage and sexual life with the vice president.
Our second lady is a beautiful Indian-American woman whose husband is white, and that seems to excite El-Sayed, who made a string of disgusting speculations about them in a podcast, sounding for all the world like a white-Southern Democrat racist from the Jim Crow days, obsessing about ‘miscegenation.’
It’s gross:
Swing-state Dem candidate’s ‘disgusting’ comments about JD, Usha Vance’s ‘Brown children’ sparks outrage | Andrew Miller, Fox News
Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, who is running as a Democrat for a U.S. Senate seat in Michigan, is facing online blowback over a podcast appearance where he… pic.twitter.com/5fwave1Awh
— Owen Gregorian (@OwenGregorian) April 21, 2026
That kind of racism, by the way, is not uncommon among third-worlders. Add socialist to the mix, which involves not taking responsibility for anything and the combination is almost predictable.
Over the weekend, he again invoked Usha Vance while attacking her husband.
PETA has built an empire on moral certainty. It lectures, protests, shames, stages stunts, and assigns personal responsibility with the enthusiasm of a hall monitor who just discovered a whistle.
Fine. Own it.
But principles aren’t worth much when their volume changes depending on whose name is attached to the controversy.
Kristi Noem got “psychotic and loony.”
Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed got a lecture about breeders.
People can decide for themselves whether politics had anything to do with it. PETA made sure they have plenty of evidence to consider.
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